Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

The boat people passed silently in front of the General Affairs Building, with its sunlit, flower-filled square. A gigantic banner hung horizontally across the top of the building: ‘MOBILIZE TO WELCOME THE EAST WIND PROJECT NO. 8!’ I tapped Desheng on the shoulder to point it out. ‘Ah, so that’s what the so-called critical times are all about.’ He stopped and gazed at the banner; the others in the group did too. They may have been poorly educated, but they weren’t stupid, and they immediately made a connection between their situation and the East Wind Project No. 8, though there was doubt on their faces. Given their level of political consciousness, they did not understand what their journey through town had to do with the project.

Seeing that the procession had stopped and that everyone was looking up at the banner put the security men on their guard. They drew their truncheons and nudged the gawkers. ‘What are you stopping for? Loitering in front of government facilities is prohibited.’

Sun Ximing grabbed Scabby Five’s truncheon and said, ‘Hold on a minute. I can read what that banner says.’ He raised his eyes and read it aloud, stumbling over some of the words. When he had finished, he grew animated. ‘We enthusiastically support East Wind Project No. 8,’ he shouted to Scabby Five, ‘and we’ll do nothing to interfere with it. So there’s no need to keep following us.’

With a sarcastic laugh, Scabby Five said, ‘Interfere with East Wind Project No. 8? You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Since you know that,’ Sun said, ‘why waste energy following us? Don’t you have anything better to do?’

Xiaogai walked up and said softly, ‘Pipe down, old Sun. Don’t cause a scene. The General Affairs Building has been designated a strategic area. It’s where our military experts work these days. The consequences of making any impact on their work would be more than you could deal with.’

‘Just where have these military experts come from?’ Sun asked with increasing doubt. ‘And why would they be here at the General Affairs Building instead of on the front lines?’

Xiaogai snorted. ‘Maybe I know and maybe I don’t, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. It’s top secret.’

Brandishing his truncheon, Scabby Five tried to get the crowd moving. ‘Break it up,’ he said. ‘We’ll get rough if you cause a scene here.’

After weighing up the situation, Sun decided not to say anything more and led the group away from the building, grumbling as he headed to the flowerbeds, followed by the rest of the group, who were grumbling too. When they reached the public toilet on People’s Avenue, they stopped and automatically reached for their belts. With a glance at Sun Ximing, they broke the silence. ‘Toilet break.’

‘OK, no harm in that,’ Sun said. ‘Who has to go? They can control heaven and earth, but not our bowels or bladders.’

Xiaogai stopped Scabby from interfering. ‘Are you all going?’ As the official in charge, he mulled over the prospect for a moment before dismissing them with a wave of his hand. ‘Go ahead, do your business. But don’t forget that these are critical times and that sanitation teams are everywhere. Don’t bring Milltown into disrepute by making a mess in there.’

Sun Ximing led the crowd into the toilet. These people habitually stopped at the public toilet every time they walked down People’s Avenue. It was, after all, the finest toilet in town, with four taps, at least two of which provided running water all year round. Automatic flushes every five minutes cleared the foul air. Local residents could use the facility daily, but for the boat people it was a rare treat, and they’d have been fools to pass up the opportunity, whether there was a need or not. A bit of symbolic relief was better than nothing. Even washing their hands with running water was enjoyable and free.

Xiaogai waited at the door while we went inside, followed by Scabby Five and Baldy Chen, who stood just inside the doorway, one on each side, like guardian deities. ‘Watch where you’re peeing, Six-Fingers,’ Scabby called out, disgusted by the man’s indelicate way of relieving himself. ‘Are you a man or a donkey? You’re pissing all over the place. You’re in town now, not on the boat, so step up to the urinal.’

‘What’s your interest here?’ Six-Fingers replied. ‘Security or pissing? Or is pissing part of security?’

‘That’s enough smart talk from you,’ Baldy Chen said. ‘You can read, can’t you? See that sign on the wall? “ONE SMALL STEP CLOSER TO THE URINAL IS A GIANT LEAP FOR CIVILIZATION.” It wouldn’t kill you to step up closer to the urinal, would it?’

Six-Fingers didn’t move, so Scabby walked up, stuck his security truncheon into the man’s back and nudged him forward. ‘I’m warning you, Six-Fingers, don’t give me any lip. It’s not just your pissing attitude I’m concerned about. You have political problems too. Who told you to shout something about arrests back there? I tell you, starting rumours is a political offence!’

The stream from Six-Fingers stopped abruptly, and I had to laugh. Scabby turned his anger on me. ‘Go ahead, Kongpi, laugh all you want, but you’re a worse case than him. Do you really think we don’t know what you did?’ He jumped over to the squat-toilet area and pointed to the scribbling on the wall with his truncheon. ‘Did you write this scurrilous attack on the leadership?’

I moved up to get a closer look. The words ‘ZHAO CHUNTANG IS AN ALIEN CLASS ELEMENT’ had been written in crayon. ‘Who says I wrote this? I don’t even know what an alien class element is. You’re the genius, you tell me.’

He obviously didn’t know either. ‘I know it’s nothing good, or it wouldn’t have the word “element” in it,’ he said. ‘You’ve written counter-revolutionary slogans before, so who are we supposed to suspect if not you?’

Everyone has his Achilles heel, and that was mine. I was too young to have a black mark on my record, that I knew, but I couldn’t work out what doing a number two in a public toilet had to do with politics. That added to my discomfort at having our toilet activities so closely monitored. Not knowing how to deal with Scabby, I squatted there to kill time. Keeping those guys holed up in a public toilet was the only tactic available to me in this struggle.

Desheng also squatted a few places away, mumbling to himself. Then he decided to taunt Baldy. ‘Why aren’t you monitoring what’s going on in the women’s toilet? With your authority, what’s to stop you?’

‘Enough of that,’ Baldy said. ‘Our security group is understaffed at the moment, but there’s a female comrade coming.’

Scabby Five appeared at my side and glared at me. ‘Kongpi,’ he said, ‘is that the best you can come up with, a bit of passive resistance? You’re supposed to pull down your pants before you shit. But go ahead, squat there. I’ll keep you company.’

As I looked up at the crayoned graffiti on the wall — ‘ZHAO CHUNTANG IS AN ALIEN CLASS ELEMENT’ — I wrestled with the word ‘alien’. ‘I’ll squat here as long as I want,’ I said, ‘and I’ll get up when I feel like it. You’re welcome to stay with me if you can stand the smell.’

‘Kongpi, your thoughts stink worse than your shit. You and your anti-socialist hatred.’

‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘I love socialism, it’s you I hate. Your kid brother and sister stole half a buttered bun from me. That’s a political issue — why don’t you deal with them?’

‘You hate the proletariat,’ he replied, ‘which means you hate me because I’m part of it. Interesting how you can’t let go of something as small as half a buttered bun.’

All the time I was arguing with Scabby Five, my eyes were fixed on Zhao Chuntang’s name on the wall. Every debt has a debtor, every injustice a perpetrator. With hatred building up inside me, I spat on it. Hatred, Scabby Five had said, and he was half right. I didn’t really hate him, or Wang Xiaogai. I no longer hated my childhood enemies, and as I squatted in that public toilet, I began to understand the blind hatred that had risen within me: my number-one enemy was my father’s number-one enemy; my father’s enemy was my enemy. And that was Zhao Chuntang. I hated him from the bottom of my heart.